Under the Knife: A Beautiful Woman, a Phony Doctor, and a Shocking Homicide (18 page)

At the same time, Dean was also driving Mark crazy. He slept all day, snorted cocaine all night. He never remembered to lock the door, and he shamelessly rifled through Mark’s belongings—even borrowing Mark’s clothing. Dean cranked up the air conditioning on high all day while Mark worked in Manhattan as a hair stylist. That drove Mark’s electricity bill up close to $500 for the month of July alone. Mark told him to stop, even wrote notes ordering it, but Dean persisted.

Mark tried talking to his boarder, but Dean would not change. In addition to his annoying and costly habits, Mark was concerned that he might be arrested if Dean was caught in his house with drugs. He ordered Dean out in mid-August. Dean took refuge in Patty Rosado’s home.

Soon thereafter, Mark spent an afternoon out in the garage shifting around the belongings Dean had left behind for storage. He wanted to fit them all into a tighter space in order to have a pathway through the garage.

In the process, he picked up a piece of luggage. Lifting it onto a stack of boxes, he heard something move around inside. Mark set down the pack, unzipped it and found a woman’s purse. It contained tampons and an address book, along with credit cards and a driver’s license belonging to someone named Maria Cruz.

He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and picked a number at random from the address book. It rang and rang but no one ever answered. He tried another number but no one picked up there either. On the third call, he got an answer.

“Do you know Maria Cruz?” Mark asked.

He was told he had the wrong number.

Mark decided he didn’t want to know why Maria Cruz’s purse was in Dean’s things. He put it back in the suitcase and added it to the top of a stack of boxes against the wall. He never mentioned his discovery to Dean.

ONE NIGHT IN LATE AUGUST, DEAN DROVE UP TO BELLEVILLE
, looking for a home to buy. A neighbor spotted him peering into the windows of one house and called the police. When they responded, Dean could not produce a license, registration or proof of insurance. The police found something in his car, though: cocaine. They hauled him to jail, where Patty came to bail him out.

In no time, Dean wore out his welcome at Patty’s place. He moved into a motel in Secaucus.

On September 5, Dean was due in court. He didn’t show. His attorney did not know where he was, and the bail bondsman could not find him. The attorney general’s office threatened to revoke his plea agreement.

Five days later, Dean visited his safe-deposit box at Wachovia bank. He removed the cash he’d been stashing there since Maria’s death.

Two weeks later, Mark Ritchey discovered a message in his voicemail intended for Dean. It was an airline courtesy call confirming his reservation that day. Dean boarded a Continental flight bound for Costa Rica with a three-month visa.

Within days, Greg got a call from Dean’s former housekeeper, Elizabeth. She told him that a hysterical Patty Rosado had telephoned. Sobbing, she’d told Elizabeth, “Dean’s left the country and he’s never coming back.”

A few hours later, the bail company called Greg. They wanted to know where Dean was, and Greg told them what he knew. They informed him that if Dean did not show for his next court appearance, Greg, as the person who originally posted bail, would have to come up with the rest of the money.

THE SUN GLISTENED OFF THE AIRCRAFT AND THE ASTONISH
ing blues of the Caribbean Sea as the Continental flight approached Costa Rica. Lazy waves splashed against immaculate black and white sand beaches, the plane passing them and moving inland. Intense emerald green vistas soon emerged.

Costa Rica possesses as many species of plant life as all of Europe. From his window, Dean could view dense forest canopies and rugged mountains. Four volcanoes—two of them active—thrust into the sky near the plane’s destination. It had been forty years since the last eruption brought devastation to the people of Costa Rica—the danger, though now dormant, remained quite alive.

Wheels touched down, bouncing off the tarmac of Juan Santamaria Airport in San Jose, a city four thousand feet above sea level. Dean had successfully left his home country—where the body of Maria Cruz lay encased in concrete.

BORDERED BY NICARAGUA AND PANAMA TO THE NORTH AND
south and by the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean to the east and west, Costa Rica is a land of lush jungles filled with the shrieks and antics of monkeys, the threat of crocodiles, jungle cats and poison dart frogs, the hypnotizing
slow-motion movement of three-toed sloths and a mind-boggling assortment of lizards, exotic birds and butterflies. On both coasts, endangered sea turtles nest.

All of these natural wonders and a population of four million are contained in a nation not quite the size of West Virginia. Unlike its neighbors, Costa Rica is a stable entity—only two brief periods of violence rocked its history since the late nineteenth century.

Although its culture is far different from what Dean had known all his life, Costa Rica’s class structure felt a lot like home. The government made a marked impact on the lives of its poorer citizens—reducing poverty and constructing a strong social safety net, creating the largest middle class in Central America—a population far more upwardly mobile than any of the other nations in the area.

Racially, Dean fit right in, too. Ninety per cent of the citizens are whites of Spanish origin with a mixture of German, Italian, English and other European nationalities, making this country the most homogenized population in the region. Adding to the gringo cast of the country, about a quarter of a million full-time residents of Coast Rica are foreigners—mostly Americans and Canadians.

Despite these influences, the culture of Costa Rica remains very Latin—Catholicism dominates and the extended family is the basis for social life.

DEAN LANDED IN A CITY WHERE SPRING IS ALWAYS IN THE AIR.
The average year-round temperature is 74 degrees—a radical departure from New Jersey and New York. He arrived in the middle of the rainy season, when most of the day is sunny but the early afternoon is marked by an hour or two of intense rain.

More than the weather separated the residents of Dean’s new home from his native country. He faced a new world where the language of the masses was Spanish.
Although Costa Ricans were known for their patience with non–Spanish speaking visitors, it nonetheless presented a barrier for Dean.

There was a marked difference in the lifestyle of the people. The pace slowed dramatically. To Dean, who lived in the orbit of a major urban center all his life, it appeared as if there was no evidence of planning in daily life—as if to-do lists were an alien concept.

Long lines were a common experience in San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital since 1823. Josefinos waited at banks, telephone offices, post offices, nearly everywhere. They accepted this inconvenience and treated it as a social opportunity. This tendency drove Dean to distraction—like most Americans, he did not possess an abundance of patience.

Dean emerged from his flight, passed through customs and hailed an official orange airport taxi for the ride to his hotel. He’d just set foot in San Jose, the only over-populated area in the country—70 percent of the nation’s people resided in the city and its surrounding metropolitan area.

For a homosexual male like Dean, there appeared at first glance to be an innate conflict between his sexual preference and the people of Costa Rica, who, as a rule, clung to conservative family values and traditional gender roles. Machismo reigned—men and women were expected to behave differently and conform to the parameters of the gender of their birth. Women achieved success in business and government here, but their role in the family remained caught in the past.

Yet surprisingly the practice of homosexuality is accepted, even legal, in Costa Rica after a citizen has reached the age of consent—legally defined as 15 years old. There are laws, too, against homophobia and prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Add to that
enlightened legal stance the anything-goes attitude in the depths of San Jose, and Dean’s choice of Costa Rica made a lot more sense.

Since San Jose was a transshipment point for cocaine and heroin from South America, Dean would have no trouble finding recreational drugs.

Dean adjusted rapidly to the no-holds-barred approach of the inner city, and participated in the exuberant and wild night life. At 11
P.M.
, discos were full, and with $200,000 in his pocket, Dean was ready to party hard. Nightly, he mingled with the crowds until the first rays of sun streaked across the tropical horizon.

DR. LAURIE POLIS HEARD THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE THAT
Dean had gotten out on bail and fled the country. She assumed that neither local authorities nor Interpol were interested in wasting the time and money to find him, or to extradite him, when all he faced was a possible sentence of 4 years. Dean Faiello, she thought, was no longer a threat—just a low-level fugitive of interest to no one. She did not hear his name again for many months.

IN OCTOBER, INVESTIGATOR DELLA ROCCA FINALLY GOT THE
search warrant providing the authorization to access Maria’s email account. In it, he discovered his first strong lead. Maria had an appointment with a Doctor Faiello on April 13. Dean appeared to be the last person to see Maria alive. Della Rocca wanted to talk to him.
But where was he?

In no time, Della Rocca sniffed out Dean’s recent legal troubles. That led him to Dean’s attorney Margaret Shalley, but she had no idea of Dean’s whereabouts.

THAT SAME MONTH, DEBRA FAIELLO RECEIVED AN EMAIL FROM
Dean with instructions on what he needed done. She followed them to the letter. She ransomed Dean’s Jeep Cherokee from the New Jersey impound lot. She and
Patty Rosado went to Mark Ritchey’s house and retrieved the title to the car. Later, Debra transferred the vehicle to her name.

While at Mark’s place, Debra and Patty picked up Dean’s furniture and all of his patient files. They also took possession of the piece of luggage Mark had found—the one containing Maria Cruz’s purse.

At this point, Greg Bach thought that Dean’s worst deeds had been inflicted on him. He knew Dean skipped town leaving Mark Ritchey with a pile of bills, and owing money to Stephen Schwartz. But none of those debts approached the magnitude of what Greg was owed.

How does Dean get away with this crap?
Greg wondered.
Because people let him
. And at that moment, Greg decided to stop being one of those people.

Through a friend, Greg learned that Dean had a new business partner—a man with a wife and children. He felt a moral obligation to find this person, wherever he was, and to warn him before he, too, was left penniless. Greg could not remain silent.
But where was Dean?

AROUND THIS SAME TIME, GREG BACH LEARNED THAT THE AT
torney general’s office was looking for Dean. He called Ronda Lustman, the prosecutor who had led the state’s case against Dean for practicing medicine without a license, to find out if she knew Dean’s whereabouts. She didn’t have a clue.

“If you have any information about Dean’s credit card accounts,” Lustman suggested, “it would help us track him down.” However, Greg no longer had access to any of that information.

He did have one tidbit for Lustman. He told her about the telephone call Martin Mannert, Dean’s accountant, had received back in April, in which Dean mentioned a woman he rushed to the hospital.

Ronda wanted Greg to share this information with Brian Ford, the investigator in the attorney general’s office covering the case. She thought it was something Brian would want to look into. At first, Greg was reluctant to make the call. Despite everything, he still cared for Dean. For two months, Greg tried to put it all out of his mind and get on with his life. But no matter how hard he tried, it haunted him.

Just before the holidays, Greg placed a call to Investigator Ford. Ford said that they just couldn’t figure out why Dean would disappear. “He hasn’t done anything that bad. Maybe it was because we wanted to question him about a missing person—a woman.”

“What missing person?” Greg asked.

“Maria Cruz.”

The name meant nothing to Greg. “Was she a client?”

“Yes.”

Greg told Ford about his conversation with Martin Mannert. He said that Dean had called in a panic because one of his patients, who was seeing him for the removal of a tattoo, passed out after he administered a local anesthetic. The patient had recovered, Martin told Greg, after Dean rushed her to St. Vincent’s hospital.

“I want to know more,” Ford said. “We’ll get on this right after the holidays. I’ll call you back then.”

Greg then called Martin, hoping to learn more about the patient who passed out. “He said she had no vital signs,” Martin offered.

That’s far worse than passing out
, Greg thought. “Do you remember when this happened?” he asked.

All Martin could remember was that it was in the spring. Greg prodded Martin’s memory, trying to stir up a connection to some other event or to a particular date. Finally, something jiggled loose. “I know it was about the same time that Dean locked you out of the house.”